Time Fears the Sphinx
by aragonite
Summary: Doctors Two and Three are both caught in "halfway" zones of their Timestream due to personal circumstance and bizarre coincidence (or is it?). They have to work together in order to repair the damages seeding the Web of Time throughout the Universe, and most of all, they have to do it without being caught because even their closest friends could ruin everything.
1. Chapter 1

Man Fears Time. Time Fears the Sphinx.

-Arabic Proverb

* * *

Finally, my chance to pair up Two and Three with a really juicy problem. This is a braided tie-in from all sorts of directions; Planet of the Spiders, The Dalek Invasion of Earth; War Games, The Three Doctors; The Five Doctors; Trial of a Time Lord; The Two Doctors; Downtime; Season 6B and then some. Ties in to my ficanon: Anam Cara, TIDERAKER, THE POWERS OF TWO, and BETWEEN THE WALLS OF THE WORLDS. Prose Canon has it the dying Third Doctor wandered quite a while, lost, before finally returning to UNIT after defeating the Great One. There's also the obvious fact that Two is noticeably older between The Five Doctors (without Jamie and Zoe), and then he's suddenly back with Jamie and VIctoria (THE TWO DOCTORS). Lastly, we never got a nice explanation for Susan's fate and why she is clearly prosperous in war-torn post-2164 London after the Daleks creamed the whole city.

Each Doctor gets a drabble for each chapter. It starts with Three, then Two's drabble follows after. Soon enough they'll collide with each other, and, professional agents of chaos that they are, they'll only do a little bickering before they settle down to the real business at hand.

* * *

**Metabelis III**

The Great One's screams raked his mind, her subsonic death-flails burning his flesh and already wounded psyche. The big man stumbled without his normal grace to the console, falling into it. His vision blurred and spun out of control. This would have instantly killed a smaller Time Lord, he knew, thinking of his otherselves.

_Sarah Jane. The Brigadier._ A friendship too-long lost and finally just salvaging...

His own honour wouldn't let him betray them with his absence. They deserved to know.

He'd spent his exile constructively, taking apart his TARDIS and putting her back together, bolt by bolt and cell by cell. The hours of hard work had rewarded him with a master's understanding of her workings unparalleled by any of his otherselves. He knew her better than he knew himself.

Knew she would take him home to die.

He sank to his knees, his weight supported by the console, and, taking a deep breath for strength, the Doctor pressed the Return command. He was unconscious as she wheezed out of the caverns. But the Great One's screams of pain and madness stayed with him.

* * *

**2: 22nd-Century Earth:**

The blast that knocked him flying was no less impressive as the outraged roar of its instigator. Ears ringing, the little Time Lord staggered up, slipping on the crumbly scoil of the wounded city. His skin stung from rockshards; shale-dust coated his mouth and throat. He coughed and blinked, trying to see through a blur before realizing the blur was really a rolling fog.

Oh, not that fog again...

He struggled to run.

"_Doctor!"_ The scream chilled his hearts. _"You cannot escape!"_ A floodlight burst through the thickening atmosphere, and the white tendrils coiled away from it, scalded by the brightness. It regained itself and grew in strength, pulling moisture from the shattered pools of stagnant rainwater. _"Find him, my Haar! Find the Doctor! He's stolen the Helm!"_

"Oh, no." The Doctor gasped, weary to the bone from too much running and fighting. The Haar never needed to rest, being an atmospheric life-form, and its commander had been living off the fat of the land at the expense of the Dalek-torn populace.

All that would end by dawn if he could keep the Haar from the Helm...He ran for his TARDIS, hoping he would be fast enough...


	2. Heading Home You've Lost and I've Won

**3. Heading Home**

The Doctor woke up dull and stupid. The waves lingered in his body, making his nerves hum against the cool glare of the TARDIS lights. He closed his eyes in momentary despair; his own life was not as important as seeing things through to the end—that was important. But had he set the controls properly? He wasn't sure. At least his mind was no longer swamped with the screeches of the Spider Queen. He shuddered at the memory.

Holding his breath for strength, he rose to his feet to check the readings, knowing his returning strength was an illusion. There was no cure for Metabelis radiation. It would take years to finish him off, but he was finished in a regenerational sense. He'd courted Fate and cheated Death so long, it was almost a shock to hear the Dance was coming to an end.

But I did it, he thought, and his tired face cracked into a smile that made him lose centuries of age; in that moment, he looked like a rascally little boy again. I did it.

He stared at the readings and was encouraged. The TARDIS was smooth on course. He would be back to UNIT before long.

* * *

**4. I've won, you've lost.**

The little man stumbled in his TARDIS without his usual grace. He fell into his Console and collapsed on the floor after the doors shut. Wheezing for air, he hammered on the Console's de-materialization Controls before he realized he still had the safety on. He panted, snapping the safety free and slapping the Control.

_Doctor! _ The hateful mind-voice lashed out against his, and he cried out, clutching his temples. _You may have won this battle, but you will lose the war!_

"_You've lost!"_ The little man shouted. _"If I were you I'd run and hide! The Haar are going to celebrate their freedom from you now that you're missing their Control!"_ He patted his pocket where the Helm rested.

_I will find you, Doctor! You cannot stop me from achieving my power! It has already happened!_

"You cheated Time for power!" A wave of dizziness struck the little Time Lord and he swayed where he stood. "I will stop you!"

_You will beg for Death, Doctor! That I promise you!_

"I'm not afraid of you!" The Doctor swayed on his feet, exhausted. "You've lost...you can't...damage my...Time-stream...any...more..." He stopped and closed his eyes, holding himself still.

And fainted.


	3. Something NewUnfortunately

**5: Is It A Time Storm?**

When the Proximity Alarm triggered, the Doctor was deep in the sleep of the exhausted. The klaxon sounded through his troubled dreams, forcing his eyes open. He blinked, reaching up to rub at his face and tried to think. He was lying on the pull-out bed set in the Console Room's walls. The lights were dimmed in concession to his eyes, and...the alarms...

It had been so long since he'd heard that particular pitch and tone; in his confused state he needed to think of its meaning. Temporal, Spatial, Dimensional? Vortex? Ah, F#-that meant spatial. A natural phenomenon, then. Like a breaking planetoid or gravity field...he could just reset the homing signal and the TARDIS would re-route to a safer-no wait; that was a switch to the Aeolian...that meant Temporal...

And now that was a high C-natural! Dimensional! What was going on? A Time Storm?

"Heaven forbid," he muttered with a mouth gone dry with shock. It wasn't fear for himself so much as fear for anyone else caught up in the celestial equivalent of a tsunami. He struggled to the Console and blinked wide-eyed at what he was seeing.

"Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear."

**6: Another Accursed Relic**

The Doctor would have been unconscious a lot longer were it not for the Helm. It would not let him rest. The sentient circuitry chafed at its new prison, vibrated and hummed. When its new keeper refused to respond it protested in ever-louder language.

"Ouch..." The little man mumbled groggily, and rolled to one side, taking his body-weight off the sharp corners of the thing.

It complained at him, nastily.

"Oh, shush!" He groaned. "Shush, you..!" He fumbled through his coat, pulled out the accursed relic, and glared at it with all the malice he could muster on short notice. "You are a poisonous little thing!"

It didn't care. It wanted him to obey. It whispered in his mind. _Serve Me. Call the Haar._

"Oh, no you don't!" He shook it angrily. "Of all the Time Lords who had to imprint his mind into you, why the Halomancer?"

He climbed to his feet and yanked out his sonic screwdriver. The Helm screeched and screamed and bit his hands with sparks as he worked, but he took it apart piece by piece. His worn face was made for smiles and laughter, but it also wore weary responsibility well.


	4. Not normally A Problem, Getting Involved

**7: Not **_**Normally**_** a Problem...**

There was no getting around it; they were headed for a bad time.

The TARDIS was more worried about him that she was herself. She found the old chair he used back in his last incarnation and he sank into its embrace with a deep breath. Just in time. The timeshift shuddered as the first wave of meteoroids struck.

Meteoroids normally weren't a problem for a TARDIS. They were basic nickle-iron chunks or ice; but this meteoroid field was different. It was impregnated with Taranium.

Taranium was the element of time travel machines.

The TARDIS did not like being around what must have felt like vibrating, buzzing, electrical impulses. She dimmed her lights and groaned in protest; the Doctor managed to rally enough strength to manually operate the extra defenses—including the power-greedy Extreme Emergency shielding—even a few grams of taranium in the entire field would be enough to bring Daleks, or heaven help them, Sontarans.

Finished, he gasped back into the chair, closing his eyes. The TARDIS jerked, and he nearly fell to the floor.

"Just hold on, old girl," he said out loud. For once he worried if she could hear him or not. "Just hold on."

**8: Getting Involved...**

His hands ached from taking apart the Helm, but the pressures against his mind was gone. The Doctor would have laughed for relief had he the energy. He chose instead to let the bits lie where they'd fallen and sank back into his old chair, wiping his face with his handkerchief. It was somewhat clean, being safe in his pocket for most of his run across the half-repaired ruins of London.

_Good Lord, London looked just like Skaro laid waste! I cannot believe that is over_, he closed his eyes. The narrowness of his escape—and the scarcity of his odds—fell over him at that moment, and he began to shake.

_Oh, Susan! You're as bad as I am for getting involved!_ Still, he relished his short reunion with his granddaughter—and the faces of her smiling husband and children. They were well and healthy and if all went well, would stay that way. _It was worth every sacrifice._

Just then that the Console rang and he blinked. A tall, dour holographic Time Lord stood shimmering in the room.

"Oh." He said flatly. "_There_ you are."

"Report, Parolee 2(9*200)." The CIA officer demanded. "You were out of contact! Why?"


	5. Surprises and Truisms

**9. Still Time For Another Surprise In My Life**

The TARDIS screamed in panic.

The Doctor could not blame her. He'd regained some strength with his rest and used it by hanging on for all he was worth. The safety harness was out of reach by mere inches but in his condition it might as well have been a Roman Mile. The readings clamored, going ballistic in every possible sense of the word as the taranium-laced meteoroids slammed against the hull.

No Time Lord had previous experience for anything as rare as raw-state taranium: 99999.99% of the ore was on Gallifrey's Moons. His inner scientist was glad the TARDIS was recording the ruckus; it was invaluable information if they survived it.

As he watched, the enriched ore lumps pulled out of their right-angle paths and moved to the TARDIS. _It must be a like to like attraction,_ he concluded cautiously.

The TARDIS hated the attention. Like a child with cockleburrs, she spun, sending the bits flying back into space—only to loop back.

_They're forming an orbit around us!_ The Doctor was ill, he was dying and he was very low on energy, but he always had enough to be both astonished and delighted that he could still be astonished.

**10: Telling the Truth to Hide the Truth...  
**

"I _had_ to disengage the Tracking Beam!" The Doctor said wearily. "You can't be too careful when you're chasing down renegade criminal Gallifreayns. They discourage getting assassinated."

"Enough insolence!" The Time Lord snapped. "Did you find The Renegade?"

"Well...Yes and no." The Doctor hemmed and hawed. "He's dead, but he'd copied his mind into an Haar's Helm and forced the people into obedience or he'd shatter the Earth in drought." The Doctor pointed to the floor grimly. "It took time to get it away from its minions, and a bit longer to...neutralize it." He grimaced.

"A Time Lord cannot transfer his mind into an object without assistance from another Time Lord." The Agent glowered. "Who helped him?"

_Oh, Susan! _The Doctor felt his hearts stop. "I couldn't say."

"Or won't?" The Agent smirked, cat to mouse. "You _have_ been in this time-niche before."

The Doctor forgot to breathe. His mind raced at zeptoseconds. So they knew of his last self's previous journey...but not that he'd left Susan there. And she was still invisible to their minds.

"What if I did?" He snapped, and marveled at how very much like his old self he sounded just then.


	6. Taking the Fall

**11: Theory and Reality**

The Meteoroids were getting more and more troublesome and the TARDIS more and more difficult.

The Doctor had managed to wedge his large body into a solid position that would let him stay put and watch the bulk of the excitement. The initial plan was to sample enough of the meteoroids' incoming trajectories to plot backwards and find the source of the meteoroid's orbits. Once he had that, he should be able to chart out the quickest way out of said orbital field.

In **_theory_**, this worked grand, like one of his beloved school projects.

In **_reality_**, this was more like one of his school projects sabotaged by the Master to embarrassingly explode.

A lump of solid ore that must have weighed twelve English tons in Standard Gravity struck the side of the TARDIS and sent her spinning erratically. The Doctor found his floor had become the wall, and tumbled head over heels straight into the Power Room. This was unfortunate, but not the worst thing that could have happened to him; he only struck the Auxillary Memory Banks, and that was with his back instead of his skull. In his weakened state it was enough to knock him out.

**12: Taking the Fall**

They didn't know Susan was forced to help transfer the Halomancer's mind to the Helm with the Valeyard's machinations; they couldn't possibly care about her trauma. They would convict her for Interference and condemn her presence on his stolen TARDIS, rip her from David and possibly erase her children out of History! David would be made to forget her, but she would be permitted to remember him—hell for both. He _couldn't_ let her go through what they'd already done to him with Jamie and Zoe!

But it was true that the Halomancer couldn't Mind-transfer alone. So he had to convince the CIA _he_ was the guilty party.

"What of it?" He repeated, drawing himself up to his full, slight height, thumbs hooking into his braces. "It's not like one has a choice when there's a gun on their head! He could push his mind into any body! The idea of that murderous killer using my genius is hardly something the CIA would approve!" Not lying; Susan did have his intellect. _Lie with truth_. He set his jaw like a stubborn little bulldog. "The problem is fixed. That should be the end of it!"

"Hardly. There remains your punishment."


	7. The TARDIS Does Something Drastic

**13. The TARDIS Does Something Drastic**

It took a long time before the TARDIS stabilized enough to let up stay up and down stay down.

The Doctor blinked with heavy eyelids, but knew better than to move more than that until he properly assessed the situation. _I am very quite tired of losing consciousness!_

He cast his senses outwards, listening and waiting. Not for the first time, he dwelt on the bitter knowledge that when the Time Lords had blocked his hard-earned wisdom of time and space travel, they'd also removed many of his memories and his senses. He'd learned for years to do without, and now that he had it all back again, it all felt...two-dimensional.

Even the little Hobo, for all of his incompetence in piloting the TARDIS, would _know_ on an instinctive level what was wrong with her right now; he needed instinct more than hammered knowledge.

Because the information pouring out of the Console was not making a bit of sense.

_Oh. Of course,_ he had time to think before the TARDIS decided to do something drastic. _The taranium..! We're being pummeled by...cricket-balls of Time! If too many hit at once, we could be tossed Anywhen!_

And then TARDIS did something drastic.

**14: A New Punishment**

"_Punishment_?" The Doctor yelped, quickly swelling his indignity to ridiculously high levels. The greater his protests, the more they would focus on him and hopefully, forget Susan's world. "That 'Interference,' as you put it, happened when I was still a Renegade! All of my crimes were gathered under a single sentence _which I am serving_!"

The Hologram smirked coldly. _Arrogant Prydonians..._ "As this _affects_ the current case you were assigned to solve, we can easily appeal it..?"

"Oh, very well!" The Doctor snapped, slapping his hands to his sides.

"The length between your first Interference and this new case is exactly one Indiction. Thus, for that span of time an extra punishment—temporal freezing-will be added to your sentence."

"But that's...fifteen years!" The little man choked. "You can't freeze me! That will directly affect my Timestream! My futureselves!"

"Temporal technology has improved since you fled from us, Doctor." The hologram chuckled coldly. "It will not affect your futureselves. Only the Doctor you are now. Use the time to reflect upon your new difficulties as you await your next assignment."

"As always...too kind." The Doctor had time to mutter, before everything went black again.


	8. Borusa Would Finaly Be Impressed

**15: Borusa Would Finally Be Impressed!**

The Doctor painfully sat upright, back against the wall. He celebrated this significant victory by shooting his cuffs. A brief mental check proved his body had (for now) stabilized against the effects of the radiation.

He was still alive (if still dying), and a quick glance at the Console assured him the recording of the storm had preserved. Even if he couldn't parse it out, future observers would.

_That was...amazing..!_

A playful grin slipped across his face and promptly locked into a giddy ear-to ear grin as the realization of what he'd done began to become _real_.

_A dying Time Lord, weak as the proverbial kitten and out of his head with radiation poisoning, just piloted his way through a storm completely unique to Gallifrey's dusty old halls of knowledge!_

_I did this! _ He gloated as the readings scrolled reams of priceless data past his eyes. _ I did this! Oh, Borusa, if only you could see me now! I'd finally get that 10 out of 10, wouldn't I?_

For a swan song, this was magnificent! Just for the _attempt_ he'd go down in the history of the Universe! For surviving successfully...!

"Beats Niagara Falls in a barrel!" He crowed.

**16. Now What?**

The TARDIS was distressed; that woke him up.

At first he wrote the disorientation off as a fluke; a carryover from the CIA's re-writing of his makeup. And they'd done it, he knew! He felt different and he _didn't like it._

Just trying to get up made the room go swimmy. The TARDIS hummed, querulous. "Don'know..." He muttered. His ear for her beautiful music was..._dulled_! It was just like those too-intense weeks in the start of his Renewal! He winced and sank back, clutching his head against a tattoo and mourning his loss of empathy with the craft. After much Tibetan breathing meditation, the worst throbs faded. Thankfully. "We'll be all right, Dear."

He hoped.

The little Time Lord strained to listen with quartered senses, but caught nothing save the low hum of the old girl as she slipped through the Vortex.

The Vortex. He didn't remember setting the coordinates...or anything else, but she was clearly moving within the tunnels. Maybe he just didn't remember?

But...if _she_ took off—she'd default to her original programming, head for trouble**..!**

He was just standing when the old craft shuddered and every single alarm in the TARDIS went off like a thousand insane Dalek banshees.


	9. Days Have Been Better

**17. From Outer Space to Under Space?**

Data logged—check. Information vitalized into memory banks—check. Backup data—check. For good measure, the Doctor copied it all into a Cube for Gallifrey—but _something_ stopped him just as he was about to telepathically send it off.

_I really ought to see where I am right now, oughtn't I?_

The Doctor had learned to listen to those little questions in his head. He suspected it was a heritage from his past selves, a personality pattern that carried over.

There was rarely any point in arguing with good advice, especially when it came from himself. He carefully put the Cube into a safe spot and tapped open the scanning screen.

"Well, good grief," he said out loud. A gigantic wall of ancient black limestone dripping with stalactites met his mildly astonished blue-green eyes. "From Outer space to Under Space." His brows drew together in light puzzlement. One of the things about having the Old Girl—she _was_ a Type 40 TT, and that meant without driving instructions she'd revert to her original programming—which was to go to the nearest hiccup in Time and Space for her scouts' investigation.

"That's nothing near Earth." He said to himself softly. "So...just where exactly is _here_?"

**18. Days Have Been Better.**

Somewhere in the crucial moment between needing to pilot around a planetestimal the size of Rassilon's Bathtub, and the gravity going completely shot, the Doctor had time to darkly observe that this was one of the most relentlessly awful days of his short life.

"I've just about had enough of this!" He exclaimed as he reached up and slapped the ceiling before it could add to his growing collection of headaches—literally. His skull still ached from running about Dalek-shattered London, not to mention taking that stunner beam for Susan and David (who would have thought even the Valeyard would condescend recycling _Daleks_ for spare parts?); and then the Halomancer trying to take over his mind (with the Valeyard's too-eager-assistance); the Haar hoping to eat him; and then that ghastly little mean-spirited sentient Helm that he did _not_ regret taking apart-

A piece of that Helm, all sharp crystalline corners, floated up in the lack of gravity to hit his cheek. "_Ouch_!" He shouted and slapped it away with a foul-tempered snarl. Blood dotted his face. _"Confound it!"_ He exclaimed at the top of his lungs. _"One thing at a time!"_

And then the TARDIS did something drastic.


	10. The Next Mystery, Trouble, or Disaster

**19. On To The Next Mystery**

The Doctor stepped outside the TARDIS and breathed in soft, cool air. His torch-beam threw back the glitter of suspended vapour. It was nothing like the cavern of the Spiders: dry, dusty and musty with the contagion of death lingering in his nostrils. He could smell life here, and moisture dripped from the hollow stone straws to make tumbled-up lumps of calcite.

He examined one cautiously, not touching it (might be a protected cavern; never knew). "My word," he said out loud. "Very like Earth...but not nearly enough quartz in the composition." There was plenty of crystalline structure hiding in the stone, however. Perhaps that had been part of the pull for the TARDIS? Being partially crystalline herself, she would respond-

He glanced up slowly, and saw nothing above but the voluminous black void and... green stars? Ah. No. No...glowing green _insects_. Wormlike, miniature versions of those BOSS maggots...They were crawling along the dome, looking for food.

If there was one cautionary rule about cavern ecosystems, it was that the life-forms were adaptable to and designed for eating newcomers. The Doctor gave the glowing worms a leery look before moving slowly away from the TARDIS and to the next mystery.

**20. Which Crisis To Fix First?**

"Oh, good Heavens!"

Protests to Infinity notwithstanding, the TARDIS ignored her pilot in favor of survival. The Doctor had given up on the gravity returning anytime soon, and used the roundels to crawl down where a push and shove got him to the console. After some fumbling about he clutched a safety harness and he didn't dare breathe until it was secure about his waist.

"Good Lord," he swore under his breath, and cringed as a new salvo of complaints erupted from the telepathic circuits. "Oh, dear..." Head throbbing anew, he clutched it with one hand, the other desperately prying open the board.

Normally his ken of the ship was perfect; they were whole when together, ghosts when apart. But in rare cases...one of them was out of balance too badly to be repaired by the other.

Like now, with the TARDIS' different compartments all screaming for attention at once and like a mother faced with a large, panicking brood of children, the Doctor couldn't triage which part needed what help first.

At times like this he wished he was more like the Dandy, with his superior know-how of the TARDIS body. He'd know what to do!


	11. TARDIS Temper Tantrum

**21: Curiouser and Curiouser**

Breathing, the Doctor was astonished to learn, was easier for his radiation-scarred lungs down in this cool, moist cavern system. He'd always liked the fascinating complexities of sunless atmospheres under solar ecosystems, and several hours of exploring had rewarded him with some interesting clues.

The caverns were inhabited, if very carefully, by a humanoid species leaving very humanoid footprints in the softer earths. There were artificial lumen installed in the walls, but they only winked in at his proximity, and winked out when he left. A great deal of scientific sensitivity had been given to preserve this world from contamination.

Water rang against bells of stone, soft and achingly poignant, and the clearest pools of chilly water reflected his torch. The further he traveled, the warmer the air.

Geothermal? He wondered. It wasn't impossible, but karstic geology mixed with geothermal lines could make for some _interesting_ subsidence.

He was just wondering where the inhabitants were again when a soft chime went off. As far as intruder alarms went, it was the most polite one of his vast experience.

And the big stern robot with a gun unit set in its chest was even more polite than its alarm. How refreshing.

**22. TARDIS Temper Tantrum.**

The TARDIS had had enough.

The Doctor was not surprised when all systems blinkered in panicked protest; he'd been expecting this for some time—ever since the CIA violated her circuitry with their soulless, bestial components. She obeyed their commands just as he obeyed them, both enslaved to greater powers; but there was a fundamental difference:

Being a machine, _she_ could get away with rebelling more.

So against the strain of harassing taranium meteoroids and the fact that her beloved pilot had been crippled by the Time Lords, impairing her ability to "talk" with him, she rallied her dwindling resources, diverted all available power for the cause...

...and pitched a temper tantrum the likes of which Gallifrey hadn't seen since the Great Vampire War.

The Doctor clutched at his head as her shrieks went on and on and on. He slapped his own ears to disrupt the assault in his eardrums; he shouted at the top of his four lungs. _Anything_ to ease the strain.

Over their combined screams, he dimly heard hissing pops as the CIA's spybugs imploded from the sounds.

He hoped the feedback was giving his gaolers a fraction of the pain _they_ were feeling now.


	12. Introductions and Contemplations

**23. Introductions**

"Hello." The Doctor was careful to keep his hands in plain view. He spread his fingers for good measure, and belatedly remembered that was a challenge-signal in over half the known planets. "How do you do. I am the Doctor."

And here was the moment in which he would either be met with this statement with blank incomprehension (second best), or pleasure (best) or instantaneous threats of death (worst).

"Please do not move for your own protection." The Robot said courteously. A glowing rod passed up and down before the tall man. "There is an epidemic and it is necessary to scan you for illness."

"Oh? That's very civil of you. What sort of illness are we talking about?"

"The Wasting."

"Oh. Dear me. That sounds...rather unpleasant. What are the symptoms?"

"A wasting away of body, mind and motivation."

"Motiv—ah, the spirit." The Doctor had not thought of 'motivation' as a synonym for spirit, and rather liked it. "By all means carry on. I'm curious to see the results myself."

"You are free of the Wasting, but your physiology is unfamiliar."

"Yes...well...ahem...I tend hear that quite a bit, I'm afraid."

**24. Meanwhile, Back at the CIA**

The CIA officer glanced up from his desk with an impatient scowl. "Yes?" He blinked in the expectant face of his immediate supervisor. "I do beg your pardon, sir. I thought you were that idiot Castellan."

"Perish the thought, Pinered. I was just proofing your reports. So we may completely erase that Arcalian Blight from our files of the Unaccounted?"

"Transferring his mind into a Helm explains the spoiled fix on his temporal address," The other grumbled. "And I could see for myself the Doctor had dismantled the thing. There _were_ some odd readings that almost looked like there were other Time Lords on Earth, but they were all proven inconclusive."

"Good." The Supervisor tucked his hands neatly inside his sleeves. "So far, The Project is coming along. And far more successfully than our previous endeavors."

"Set a thief to catch a thief," the officer agreed. "Though...it _is_ a bit strange to have _any_ project last this long and not lose any of our Agents."

"We don't have Agents for this. We only have..._him_."

"Too true." The two fell into uneasy silence—the usual action when the rumpled (and regrettably verbal) little Exile was involved.


	13. Startling News and Emergency Meetings

**25. The Great Vigesimation**

The robot was graceless, had blunt Ice Warrior-ish claws, three eyes, and its dull metal shell was covered in dings.

Its language (thankfully) was just as to the point.

"It would require years of explanation."

"I see," The Doctor chewed it over for a moment. "Do you require assistance?" While he'd like to volunteer, there was no sense jumping into community service without a little more information.

"We require assistance." The robot agreed, and something pinged with a rusty high C#. The Doctor suspected its upkeep and repairs had fallen behind as the people lost their ability...and energy. "A Distress Call was sent to the Ancestor World but after five hundred years, our odds of a timely response is minimal."

"Yes, well, that _would_ make quite a lot of difference." The Doctor agreed carefully. "What of your laboratories...hospitals...research stations? Do you have anything of the sort?"

"Our resources have dwindled since the Great Vigesimation."

"The Great..." The Doctor paused, his memory dialing up the definition. _Vigesimation: 'Act of killing every twentieth person.' Great Scott!_ "Jehoshaphat! Would you...mind...explaining just that to me? Starting with...the Ancestor World: What can you tell me about it? Location? Galaxy? Era?"

* * *

**26. Emergency Meetings**

Being in the CIA meant being called to emergency meetings at the drop of a cassock. Any cassock.

Since the Doctor had become their reluctant weapon, it seemed as though they were getting more than their fair share of emergencies.

"...with the Salt-Painter (alias Halomancer) eliminated, that lowers our numbers of Turncoats from the Original fifteen to twelve."

"Amazing. And our operative has survived?" One of the older Councilmen wondered with understandable surprise.

"Yes."

The Council fell silent, reflecting that it was unusual that their last, desperate plan was working so well when the better plans spectacularly failed before.

"Yes, well, I am a bit concerned about the ones that have so far eluded the Doctor, but at least they are a bit more..._inconsequential_ compared to those feral traitors!"

"He gives the predators the bulk of his attention," A Consultant pointed out, where at the bottom of the wall-screen, a string of name-glyphs burned. "Sardon's training, I should presume. He lists _everything_ according to urgency in threats against the Lord President."

"Then we needn't fret. What is our next step?"

"Determination: Should keep the Doctor in the field or bring him back for evaluation?"


	14. ThoughtsAre They Wise?

**27: Thoughts and More Thoughts**

The Doctor was willing to listen—if he were allowed to rest in some relative comfort—but the robot suddenly paused, bright blue sparks flickering in its Third Eye. The Doctor doubted it was more than superficially analogous to the Third Eye in humans (the patterns said it was clearly receiving information from somewhere), but it was curious how the mechanical body grew devoid of movement as it recorded its instructions.

This was getting more intriguing by the moment. The big man was getting tired; he curled his long legs beneath his body and rested on the cool damp of the cavern floor, lotus, while the Robot communed in a language he could barely fathom.

A stricken population was bad enough, but he also had to know where and when this was, and if this problem was planetwide? Did he land in a leper colony? The Robot's language was not helpful. It described its makers as "The People" and that could mean anything—it didn't even guarantee the People were alive. Take the Krotons for example. They were intelligent, but most of the Galaxies considered them "not alive."

Goodness, he hadn't thought of Krotons in-

-and why had the Robot stopped moving?

**28. Is This Wise?**

"_The Agent is going through a Disciplinary Regeneration alone?"_ A tall elder in pale blue stood, stricken. "With no contact? We must organize an Emergency Retrieval!"

Ceruleans. No real power, just ideals, and a lot of them. "Be calm, Suim. The Doctor _has_ Regenerated before. This will not be his first." The Chair tried to be soothing. "It is a fallacy that one will automatically die if one regenerates alone."

"But he's never Regenerated alone." The Medical Officer pointed out. "He regenerated into his current form in company."

"Humans? Do not be insulting!"

"Humans are _not_ company."

"There is a reason why all Humans on Gallifrey are living in the Wastelands!"

The Supervisor rubbed his face, praying for strength around the fuss. "As long as his faces his punishment inside his TARDIS, which, we all agree is his preferred environment, there should be negligible problems."

"We should still retrieve him." The old Cerulean said stubbornly. His glare could have melted the Torc of Office around the Officer.

"Agreed." Goth would not confess he had his personal reasons for bringing the Doctor back. He might be more impressionable now. "Officer Jeck, would you contact the TARDIS?"


	15. Not a Nice Sound

**29 Not a Nice Sound...**

The Doctor took a risk and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. It hummed over the robot's face, and finally chirped, the sound echoing in the damp darkness as the frequency bounced off the limestone, further and further away until dissolving into space.

"No power at all?" He marveled to himself. "That's odd...we were just talking." Or communing, trading information, whatever you called it; the point is there had been no warning at all. "It's as though something or someone drained your power completely dry.

"And if that's the case, what the deuce would be the motive? Who would interfere with a rescue mission?" Logistically there were a few possibilities; few palatable and none fell under "happy."

Something far away squeaked with a metallic F# in the shadows.

"I'm not sure I like the sound of that..."

The Doctor decided to stop talking to himself, but it was a little hard. He preferred to not be alone. He tucked his hand inside his pocket, concealing his screwdriver.

The sound repeated itself and it was much closer. Not a squeak this time. It was more...organic.

Querulous.

The Doctor hoped it was just his imagination that it also sounded hungry.

**30: And the Long Hand of CIA Justice**

Naturally, any clear decision met with debate.

Redpine was defensive. "I was following Judicial Procedure AA5632, Code 99, citing the Precedent of Tannistry the Elder, in which unclaimed Regenerations sundered to the Public may be allocated to the maintenance of Operatives in the field who have not yet finished their obligations to Society. He never denied his part with the Halomancer's transference; The scanners detected no lies. It may be why he leaped to this particular mission with unusual fervor—he must have been feeling guilty over his part in the mess."

"I wasn't criticizing, Redpine. Merely seeking clarity."

"...Temporal Freeze under a whole Indictment...yet better that we say he met our justice rather than have to answer we did not to the High Council..."

"...Tut!..Only the Tribunal knows the Doctor's Second Life is being spent usefully with us; his otherselves were coming and going throughout the Citadel with no more awareness of their lost past than a drunk Shobogan..."

Goth closed his eyes. Like most CIAgents, the Doctor's identity was a public secret—even the Lord President was rarely privy to the data-but the argument was as solid as it got when it involved the Doctor.


	16. Not a Good Feeling

**31 Just in Time?**

The Doctor jumped slightly as the lumen by his elbow suddenly flared brightly. Perimeter trigger, he guessed before his reward came in the form of a low hiss. Something that could have been claws—big ones—clattered against the stone and he caught a fleeting glimpse of dark green retinal glow: a nightsighted hunter.

He didn't much care for this.

"Hmn." He said under his breath, hand locked neatly around his sonic screwdriver. It wasn't exactly made for combat, as his skills were sufficient in the most case...but his thumb gently worked over the sensitive controls, quietly preparing one of its least-used modes. His predecessor had been a bit, shall we be polite about it, _paranoid_, and had designed the first version of the SSD along personal lines: His model was crude, rude, graceless of form and elegant only in its efficiency (which to the little Hobo was the only artistic elegance that mattered...how silly we are when we're less than 500!).

It only had a few—precious few—applications, but what it did do, it did very, very well.

Just in time.

The clattering turned to a clunk as a stone hit the lumen, plunging the predator and prey in pitch darkness.

* * *

**32: A Bad Feeling**

"We'll give The Doctor his recuperation and send him to his next assignment." The Chair announced. "The Pyromancer is still at large, and the longer we delay dealing with him, the worse it will be for all of Gallifrey."

"Castellan, Recall."

The Castellan saluted, and with the patience of duty in heavy uniform, pressed the codes. The Council turned expectantly to the room's Transmat Corner, where not just a TARDIS could land smoothly, but several if need be.

Nothing happened.

The Castellan paged up a new code. "Your pardon. But there is no reading on the Doctor's TARDIS."

"Oh, that old hulk..." Someone muttered. "...should have replaced it aeons ago-"

"It's expensive to lose our Agents after we invest the time in training them," he was reminded. "Think of how much more it would be to lose an Agent _and_ a modern TT."

The Apex Engineer for the repairs and controls for the old Timeship, walked over and took over for the Castellan. "There should be _some_ reading off the Covert Surveillance Equipment, or even the Trace from the Last Resort Bomb..."

Some of them were started to get a bad feeling about the Doctor.


	17. Teeth of Glass

**33. Teeth of Glass**

The Doctor's reflexes had always been excellent, no matter what his age or physical health. As soon as the lumen died the hand holding his SSD was out, thumb popping open the heavy cap.

It had been so long since he'd last used...that Dulkis business...he hoped it was still working.

A jet of supercharged thermal energy gouted like a dragon's tongue, crackling loudly as it vaporized the water droplets in the damp air.

There was just enough time to see brilliantly large, lemon yellow bulging eyes with no discernible cornea, and something the Doctor had only seen on Earth: a predator with teeth of glass. His hearts lurched up to his sternum in reactive shock because this thing was no nicer on this planet—actually worse—and a high-pitched shriek of fury splintered at his eardrums.

The screaming went on and on, as the flame boiled the glistening sheen of slime on the wedge-shaped skull. Incredibly, it still tried to get him. Glass teeth snapped and clacked, baffled by the painful fire.

_Unbelievable_, he thought, and retreated, using the defunct robot as a makeshift shelter as he spun ropes of flame by the moving SSD. _This is worse than the Great One!_

* * *

**34. We'll Just Get a Fix...!**

"I don't see a reading..." The A-E frowned. "But..." All talk ceased as she read a glowing display in Base Seven. "Officer, you did say you Temporally froze him for a _full_ Indictment?"

"..Yes..?"

"Did you have him re-activate his disengaged Tracking Beam _first_?"

An appalled silence descended upon council as every set of eyes went wide. "Oh, Perdition." Someone blinked.

The Cerulean leaned his head into his head in silent despair, which more dramatically demonstrated what they were all thinking. Just when they were getting somewhere with this ugly task...

"Wait." A throat cleared, and the normally silent Dromian gently pushed the A-E aside and moved long fingers over the controls. His silver-grey robes whispered as he worked. "If we reset the communications wave we used when speaking to the Doctor last..." He set his mouth in a corkscrew line as he concentrated. "There. All we need is to hop into the old witch's data banks and we can lock on from-" He beamed as a loud POP rattled their ears. "There! That's his recording wave! We'll just play it until the instruments get a fix-"

And all Death Zone broke loose.


	18. Multitasking

**35. Hopefully, this is Unique**

Multitasking let the Doctor think as he fought for his life against something that could have been fiendishly augmented from a deep-sea Terran Eel by a bioengineering genius on the intellectual level of Dastari, designed by the ethics of the Rani, drafted by the Meddling proclivities of the Monk, and inspired by the infallibly disastrous creativity of the Master. What it was doing in an alien cavern he wasn't sure, or why the claws belonged on a body that clearly didn't need anything more than its size, prodigious teeth, and sinewy speed to overcome all prey.

_And the elephantine-thick hide. Can't forget that..._

The thing lunged, spewing a dank cloudstinking vapourous breath, the Doctor held his own with a grimace, and vowed to table the questions for later. He struck out with the SSD, and the protective skin over the left eye blistered and bubbled. The smell in its wake was beyond description—which was an equally precise way to describe the new and advanced level of shrieking.

The Doctor hoped this was not a social beast among its kind; this pandemonium-grade noise would too easily bring in the others of its ilk.

_I hope this is the only one I find._

* * *

**36. We've Lost the Doctor**

The CIA's day was only getting worse.

The Doctor, their (so far) best Agent for their worst work, was missing and it was all their fault.

The fault began with Redpine's disciplinary punishment, which was enacted in a poor moment for timing, as he'd not thought to order the Doctor to re-engage his Tracking Beam before the punishment.

Fault was also with the technicians that ignored Sardon's order to fit the fossilized TARDIS with their best spy sensors, Bombs, and trackers. "The best" had been rather standard stuff and no one wanted to take the initiative and go shopping outside the department for better goods, much less fight to stick it in the old relic.

"We tracked him as far as a Natural Time Storm." Redpine groaned. "It struck his ship less than fifteen minutes after his Disciplinary Regeneration." And he pressed the button, opening a recording full of static, white noise, and spotty imaging. "All of our sensors have been fried to a crisp—and his mostly likely too."

True enough, but before the equipment died, it managed to record a spine-chilling transmission of the Doctor, screaming at the top of his lungs for what seemed to be forever.


	19. Losing Time

**37: A Pocket-Sized Time Vector Generator**

Finally, the thing grew too blind to act efficiently.

There were some problems with that; its head was bigger than the Doctor's—with his torse thrown in for good measure—and it could still move fast. But the Doctor suspected he had destroyed some sensory organs with the skin, and kept moving in a circle around the dead robot as the giant land-eel or whatever it was rallied and lunged, rallied and lunged again. Twice it struck the cavern wall head-on, leaving an imprint of ichor upon the rough stone.

"This is quite enough," he muttered to himself as they both paused to pant for breath.

The jaws of the thing were missing quite a few teeth at this point. They littered the earthen floor like so many crystal shards. Yet when he stepped on them, they didn't break. Another reason to not get bitten by it!

It hissed, muscles bunched under yellow hide, starting with the powerful neck below the trapdoor jaws.

The Doctor's hearts sank. He was tiring.

He held up the still-burning SSD, thumb gently pressing on the dial. Leave it to his paranoid predecessor to make a miniaturized Time Vector Generator. It was actually coming in handy.

* * *

**38: Fifteen Years**

Much paler than he was that morning, The Supervisor quickly switched off the recording. Everyone relaxed in relief.

"A Taranium Storm!" Vulpus marveled. "Rare beyond imagination! And no recordings!"

"A terrible loss for science. If only we'd known."

"If we _had_ known, the Indictment would have been delayed until after the Storm hit; he could have recorded all of that data for us! He could be recuperating away from outside interference, not dead."

"We don't know if he's dead or not. We have no proof either way!"

"Alert the Temporal Scanners. The first problem is knowing where to look. The Logicians should be given all of the data we can extrapolate from the Storm; it might give us enough probability factors."

"If we'd only known about the Storm." The Cerulean mourned. "Such loss of knowledge...and life."

Redpine sighed. "I will send the data, poor and incomplete that it is, to the technicians. They are instructed to alert the Committee as soon as the Doctor is found."

"We have fifteen years to find him. After that, the Indictment expires and the Time Streams resort. If the Doctor is Dead, so will be his futureselves."


	20. Terrible Sound

**39. What IS That Sound?**

The beast shrieked, displaying infinite rows of razored teeth like glasstic, and snapped its jaws shut with a clap. Its unblinking eyes gave nothing away, but something advised the Doctor to backpedal and he did so, SSD held high.

To his astonishment, it shook its massive head as if in unspeakable pain—coiled in a perfect Moebius Strip, hastily scrambling to go back the way it came. Short but powerful legs folded in against its body, and a long, feathery tail-tip flashed a brilliant plume of vermillion in the wake of the lumen lighting in its passing perimeter.

The Doctor watched, mouth hanging open. This really didn't make a bit of sense.

What would drive that thing away?

He held himself still, ears straining over the battle-roar hissing in his head. But past that barrier there was only the patient drip of cool water on stone.

And then...

A grinding, wheezing, gasping sound of engines.

His Lungbarrow Eyes widened in shock. He knew that sound, impossible though it was...and he knew the particular harmonics of that craft. It was missing its Cloister Bell, and the harmonics were unbalanced, and that meant...

His TARDIS under the unspeakably dull repairwork of the CIA.

* * *

40

Mercifully, the TARDIS had stopped screaming when her pilot passed out, but the silence that followed with his return to consciousness was worse. His shattered nerves found the ominous silence no less horrible because at least she had been _communicating_ with him as she shrieked her outrage. Now she was quiet.

Or...Muted.

Or did the punishment also deafen him to her music? Either possibility wrenched him to the core—a core that was gone, as if he'd been hollowed out with a laser.

This was how the Dandy lived; poor fellow. At the time the Doctor had been defensive and nervous around his successor, but the TARDIS had sang to him upon his materialization, telling him too many things about his future with her joy at being able to talk to him again. It had hurt then; it hurt now.

The Doctor couldn't move, but he had no interest in moving. His leg was numb under the wreckage and he didn't care. He just wanted to lie on the floor and do _nothing_ until something let him know it would be safe to open his eyes, because he wasn't going to try opening them again—not after what happened the last time.


	21. In the Now

**41. Oh, Dear...**

The Doctor wondered why his last portion of life was destined to be so _interesting_ when reality snapped into his brain: The Taranium Storm. Obviously he hadn't been the only Doctor caught in it!

He stepped into the younger model, eyebrows going up in mild alarm at her battered hull. The lumen responded to his movement and snapped on, giving him a more than adequate view of the damage.

"Oh, dear."

His hesitant knock met with no answer, and he gnawed his lip in an uncharacteristic case of nerves. This TARDIS had been through a rougher trip than his! That could possibly mean...

He plied his own key and the door swept open, leaking the chocolate-spice reek of artronic energy.

And it was dark.

Officially alarmed, the Doctor stepped by memory until he bashed into the Console and fumbled the lights back on. The TARDIS shuddered; lights burned red and low. He flinched at the jumbled horror of the Power Room's contents, spilled out and scattered throughout the Console room like so many toy blocks.

He clicked on the SSD's light. The air was cold enough to steam his breath in its beam. He cautiously waded through the wreckage.

* * *

**42. What's Happening?**

The little Doctor was afraid to move. His body hurt and that was less from the punishment than his joining the tidal roll of equipment spilt over the floor at the last Time Wave. Moving _had_ been tried; he wasn't going to do that again until his bravery returned.

For the past three hours (time marked by the changing rise and fall of the mechanical hum of the TARDIS chronos), he drifted in and out of consciousness. The periods of awareness grew longer, so he presumed it meant he was recovering.

Not that there was anything normal about his condition! Ghoulish, being given a partial regenerative dose that didn't even belong to him! The entire principle of the thing made him sick, and that wasn't a good place to be considering his current state of health.

Something clattered and shattered, sending his nerves flying with the bits stinging his face. He jumped out of reflex, but his body's habits weren't on par with his brain just yet, and he just wound up flopping backwards over hard and uncomfortable mechanical parts. Something knifed into his ribs below the left kidneys and he gasped in pain.

"Just hold on! I'm coming!"


	22. What Are You Saying?

**43. What Did You Say?**

The Doctor couldn't see a thing past the radius of his little light; he was literally on top of his predecessor before he saw part of a dead-white face in the center of a junkyard jumble of broken parts and wires. Two eyes blinked in the light, reflecting Lungbarrow green with blue and jade and then to a dulled jasper. The head turned; its mop of messy black hair had never been messier, but he was alive. The Doctor released his held breath and struggled to find a clear spot for his knees. He had to push parts away.

The little fellow moaned, pained and disoriented; his eyes weren't tracking properly in the light.

_His ride through the storm must have been a lot harder than mine,_ the Doctor thought to himself. "Just hold on! I'm coming!" He clenched the light in his teeth and pushed circuit boards and a box of transistors off the small man's chest. They were heavy; he heard a welcome gasp of air and wondered how long the weight had been crushing his lungs.

"Susan..."

The Doctor froze, every hair on his body rising in a chill. "Susan?" He choked. "What? What about Susan?"

* * *

**44. Breathe Through the Nightmares**

The light burned his eyes. He tried to turn away from it, but something hard and metal and sharp dug into his neck and he had to stop moving. What was happening? Nothing made sense. Up and down weren't staying put and his sense of time and space had been ruined.

Then the heavy weight off his chest vanished and he yanked breath after breath into his lungs, grateful for the freedom. A large hand was sliding under his head, lifting him up as he mumbled at the half-delirious images flitting through his mind. A frilly sleeve tickled his ear and he smelled something familiar: A mixture of old Earth meadows and...one of the planets in the Metebilis System? Well _that_ wouldn't make any sense at all! Clearly he was still insane...

Thus he stayed reasonable before a fresh wave of disorientation hit, plunging his psyche back into the nightmares.

"Susan..." He strangled, and coughed as the fresh air burned his once-restricted chest. Being sat upright helped. "Susan, run! Get David out of here! I'll hold them off! Just run, child!" He coughed again, the air burning into his blood. "Run! Run, I say! That thing will kill you!"


	23. Madness

**45. Demons**

The Doctor could only watch helplessly as his predecessor fought demons inside his mind. This was all horribly familiar to his own experience, but new to this self, who had almost slept through the voyage between the old body to the new (his life had been that close to ending forever).

He didn't know why he sensed lindos in the air; there was a thin chance he was witnessing the very regeneration that created him, but it felt too wrong. Everything felt too wrong!

"...had to disengage the Tracking Beam," he watched the little fellow mutter in his delirium. "'sn't be...too...renegade...assassin..."

Before the Doctor could ask what the hell that meant, the green eyes rolled up and he went limp as a dishrag.

"Wonderful." The Doctor was being sarcastic. When he was worried, his manners were the first thing to go.

_Might as well be useful..._

Aching with exhaustion, the Doctor pulled him out of the wreckage and staggered with success to the opposite wall. A kick sent the hideaway berth out, its moving parts stiff with inactivity. He lowered the little fellow on his back and sank down on the floor for a minute, sweating and trembling.

* * *

**46. Madness**

"Get to the TARDIS! You'll be safe!"

The Doctor partially knew this was all just fever dreams and manufactured horror. A pity that didn't really matter. Reality didn't exactly belong in his head right now; his personality and sense of self did.

Jamie and Zoe emerged, wearing the white of the Mind Robber's brainwashing. They called him, eyes blank and faces pleasant...no more animation to them than one of the once-living toys on the Toymaker's shelves.

"_Jamie, Zoe, concentrate only on my words. Think of me. Think of the TARDIS. They are the only real things here. Everything else is unreality. It is only in your minds. Now, concentrate. Come to me now. Now! Walk straight to the TARDIS. Don't stop! Come on. Keep walking to the TARDIS. Come on. Don't look behind you! Now, go in. Go in! Jamie, Zoe, go in before it's too late!"_

But they weren't listening. They couldn't hear him to listen. They were still standing stock-still, staring blankly with vapid bliss on their young faces.

"No! I won't! I won't give in!" He thrashed in his madness, knowing that he couldn't let this happen. "I can't let it happen! I can't!"


	24. Where In Time And Space Am I?

**47. Time to Act**

The big Time Lord carefully locked the door to the younger TARDIS and leaned his back against the panel, wiping chilly sweat off his face. He was shaking with fatigue; the radiation illness was rising again in his body.

The adrenaline must have helped him stay off the effects for a while. He wanted rest but there was too much to do.

He didn't like leaving his younger self like this, but this aspect of the TARDIS was a shambled mess, and he knew where everything was in his own: Tools, spare parts...

Medicine.

_And not just for me,_ he reminded himself around the slight twinge of guilt for leaving at all. _He's going to need a lot of help to get through this...whatever this is._ He shook his head in bafflement.

And his smaller self was going to need more than a bar of dark chocolate to solve his problems.

He slipped the key back around his neck and paused, listening with all his available senses. An unexpected treasure of a heavy battery-torch had been salvaged from the wreckage. He snapped it on and smiled, pleased at the powerful beam of ice-white light slicing through the soft dark.

_Excellent!_

* * *

**48. Where in Time and Space am I?**

The Doctor blinked heavily and wondered why his eyes felt so heavy.

And why it was so dark.

He turned his head from one side, to the next, but felt nothing but the press of a soft pillow behind his skull. Well. Better than the spare parts...

Wait a moment.

How did a pillow get under his head?

He moved his hands, thinking to suss out his surroundings, but something bulky met his fingertips. He fumbled puzzledly, trying to figure out what the thing was.

It soon proved itself to be a wide medical restraint holding him down to the sleeping berth set in the bed. His hands were free; it was only keeping his body from tumbling to the floor.

Good. He had a feeling the floor was still full of unpleasant things.

His head fell back and he stared out into the darkness. His head was only just beginning to clear. Good heavens, what a kettle of fish this was! He didn't like it at all.

He felt about in the darkness, surprised to bump into an expandable shelf. He hardly ever used it because it was—ouch!-esigned for bigger fellows.

Bigger fellows? How _had_ he gotten here?


	25. Bowler Hat Man, We Meet Again

**25. Bowler Hat Man, We Meet Again**

The Doctor went from "thinking ahead" to "betrayed by life's stupidities" in the brief seconds it took to step into his TARDIS just as an unpleasant guest materialized.

In _his_ TARDIS.

Oh, blast it.

"*...Hello again..." The Doctor said with no little trepidation. It is easy to be respectful when you are talking with sharks; they are cold, sharp, and own multitudinous teeth.

"Doctor," The Bowler Hat Man nodded, leaning on his umbrella. He glanced about and appeared to find the room pleasing, if a little...nostalgic. His nose twitched. "I regret to interrupt your business...whatever it is," a single brow lifted. "But I must needs intrude."

"Not at all." The Doctor said hastily. "What's the occasion?"

"Our signals thought you were your predecessor." Thin lips curled in a cultured, supercilious smile. "Obviously not."

"Oh. Well. No, thankfully." The moment turned delicate indeed, as this was one of the very minds consulted in forcing his change. The Doctor swallowed hard and kept his face calm. "I believed _he_ was working for you."

"He is. Or rather," A most discrete cough. "He was until he was lost."

The Doctor didn't hide his surprise. "Lost?" He repeated.

* * *

**26. Mindness and Madness**

The little Time Lord soon learned the waist straps were for his own protection; he could move about and even release the strap...which was soon proven a very bad idea.

Sitting up was the first in this series of bad ideas. He doubled up. He kept his head down and breathed. He shut his eyes and counted to five hundred, odd numbers first. He watched blotches dance across his eyelids. He named them after the Temporal Oversight Committee members: It made him feel twice as good to watch them slowly dissolve into nothingness.

He tried lifting his head again. That went a little bit better. Things went grey and fuzzy for a few seconds.

"Jamie?" He coughed on metal-dust. "Jamie?" There was no answer. "Zoe?"

Silence.

_Someone_ strapped him down, his confused mind reasoned. He _couldn't_ have done it himself. And he _didn't_ travel with anyone but Jamie and Zoe...

They wanted him to use one of their worthless agents—or worse, one of their gullible "volunteers" thinking they were getting political capital with a mission, only to learn too late of the true dangers.

Still half-mad, he kept calling. For his friends, and for his TARDIS.

To no avail.


	26. Don't Forget

**27. A Doctor of...Medicine?**

"A rare anomaly, a Time Storm overtook his TARDIS. If you see him, or encounter him in any form, it is your duty to turn your predecessor over to our custody."

"Custody? Turn him over? I really don't understand. I thought he was working well enough for you. Is he on the run?" He scowled. "Is this one of your infernal tests?"

"Your pardon." The Bowler Hat Man apologized. "Doctor, I should translate better. He is not officially on the run, as it were...but he is currently under a term of punishment for a...shall we call it a botched assignment?"

"Oh, that sounds like him." The Doctor muttered under his breath. A second later he felt bad for running off the mouth, but his reaction seemed to reassure his "guest."

"Due to the circumstances, he may not be...stable." Bowler Hat Man shrugged over his umbrella. "He may be delirious and instinctively seeking another Time Lord for assistance."

"I'm not a medical doctor," he protested. Well, not any more...Even the Hobo only claimed it when he actually _remembered_ being a Doctor. Oh, the joys of gaining knowledge when your brain was already deteriorating from age...

* * *

**28. Don't Forget**

The good news was, the Doctor's mind began to make genuine progress in recovery.

The bad news was... so did his memory.

He remembered in fits and starts what happened.

And then he remembered himself, calling for Jamie and Zoe.

Oh, that hurt.

The Doctor clenched his teeth and dabbled with the idea of just blanking his own memories to the point where they no longer existed...just give up and be the mindless Auton the CIA wanted him to be...

...but he couldn't at the end. Jamie and Zoe had walked innocently into the SIDRAT, unaware their minds would be erased of him; they'd hoped to remember him. He couldn't betray their own hurt by giving up.

Of all his selves, past and future, he was considered one of the weakest. Which meant he didn't fret about it when the pain made him collapse all over again.

_Don't forget,_ he reminded himself yet again. _Don't forget. _ Of all the things the Time Lords hated about him, they hated his friendship with lower species the most.

And he suspected the reasons for their antipathy for humans. If he was right—and he was rarely wrong—it was reason enough to side with them.


	27. Event

**29. Under Orders**

"Of course, Doctor. But he must be found. For his own sake, you understand. An ill Time Lord is no light matter. And recently his..alienation has worsened." Regret flashed on the messenger's face. "It was bad enough when living as a fugitive, without only the most _desperate_ of our criminals for company—it was no wonder he kept to himself! But now he _completely_ eschews the company of Gallifrey!"

"I see." The Doctor said cautiously. He wondered what really happened; he remembered being terribly lonely. Now that he _could_ go back to Gallifrey, his stubborn anger that kept him away.

"There is also the matter of his service contract. It has yet to be fulfilled, and if it is not answered, well..." A lizardy smile from the Time Lord crept the flesh on the other's arms. "_Someone_ must fulfill the responsibility."

"I...understand you." The Doctor murmured with all the humility he could muster. Now would be a good time to confess, but the instinct that held his hand from reporting the Storm was screaming at him to give nothing away. An Event was happening; he could feel the Temporal Shifting about them.

Time to Wait and See.

* * *

**30. How Long?**

The little Doctor was trying to rub the ache out of his eyes when his hearts lurched: the TARDIS had chirped—just slightly, but he had heard her, and that meant someone "good" was coming.

I heard that! He almost shouted in exuberance. So they hadn't deafened him completely—but he was still so terribly confused to her Voice. Would he recover? Or was this to be his new future?

He struggled to sit up again, blinking, as the TARDIS doors opened. His mouth opened too. A long-limbed giant of a man was walking stiffly inside, an antique packed bag hanging loosely off a square shoulder.

He stared, forced to concede the unpleasantly impossible. "I thought I was having a nightmare," he confessed hoarsely.

"If you're having a nightmare, you're not having it alone." His successor snapped—but the growl lacked its usual temper. There was unabashed concern in those blue-green eyes. "How do you feel? You've been out of your head a long time."

"Oh. Well...how long?" For the first time, he looked about the wrecked rubbish tip that was the floor of his TARDIS. He caught himself in a pained groan. "Oh, no!"

"Yes, I'm afraid so, old chap."


	28. The Bogeyman

**31. The Bogeyman?**

The Doctor waded (literally) through the mess and placed the bag on the console for a table. "I have no idea what's really wrong with you," he said crossly, "but I looked up your symptoms in my TARDIS; says it's some sort of regeneration sickness, but your immune system is in high gear as though its fighting something too." His predecessor groaned again, slumping forward with his head hanging down like a recalcitrant child.

"Right on both counts." Was the heavy answer. "The Time Lords forced a temporary regeneration on me."

The big man turned sharply, eyes narrowed to slits. "How? More importantly, why?"

"They were too close to finding Susan."

The baldness of the statement mixed with the horror of the meaning and cast a chill in the room. The Doctor pulled out the medical kit in the bottom of the bag and started filling syringes. "Hold still. This should help you recover. In the meantime, you can explain. Take your time; I have the feeling you've got a complicated tale."

"They sent me on a mission to find another renegade. A bad one. Do you remember the Salt-Painter?"

"Oh, you mean the bogeyman?"

* * *

**32. Nightmarish**

"I see you remember." The Doctor said dryly. "Yes. I was rather hoping I was the only one would could remember all those stories about him."

"Forget the most terrifying stories of our life?" The big man cocked an eyebrow at him. "No such luck. Once in a while I still have a nightmare from those old tales."

"How depressing. I was hoping you wouldn't." Silence. "He was resettling into a new Empire on Earth, just a short period from Susan's timeline. He'd found her, recognized her as one of his own people, and forced her to help transfer his mind into a...less vulnerable...vessel, where he became known as The Halomancer."

"Good Lord."

"David and I rescued her...by the skin of our teeth."

"And the Halomancer?"

"Oh, he's...here and there. And There..." The Doctor coolly nodded at the wreckage, silently waiting to see what would happen. He watched, stone-faced, as the older Doctor took in the alien pieces of technology glittering amongst the rubble. His face twisted in distaste but he said nothing.

"You took apart a Helm alone? You're lucky to be in one piece."

"Counting my mind? I'm not."


End file.
